Burundi's President Evariste Ndayishimiye has called on citizens to stone gay people, escalating a crackdown on sexual minorities in a country where LGBT people already face social ostracism and jail terms of up to two years if convicted of same-sex offences

"If you want to attract a curse to the country, accept homosexuality," Ndayishimiye said in a question and answer session with journalists and the public held in Burundi's east on Friday

"I even think that these people, if we find them in Burundi, it is better to lead them to a stadium and stone them. And that cannot be a sin," he said, describing homosexuality as imported from the West